For what is the 11th time now, it’s the time of the month when we go on a website called RandomAnime.org, which does exactly what you’d expect. It gives us a random anime like it did many other times. I watch that anime, but not all if it’s awful or too long, and I then write about it. I do the randomizing thing as live as this post can get, so I don’t know what I’m going to be watching yet. Let’s check it out.

Well, would you look at that! An anime I don’t only know, but I’ve also watched an episode of before. Cool, not much to get into here beforehand, but we’ll take a look at the synopsis.

“Poputepipikku turns absurdist comedy up to eleven with its pop culture references and surreal hilarity. With two bonafide high school girl protagonists—the short and exceptionally quick to anger Popuko, and the tall and unshakably calm Pipimi—they throw genres against the wall and don’t wait to see what sticks. Parody is interlaced with drama, action, crudeness, and the show’s overarching goal—to become a real anime.”

Yeah, it’s a comedy. An absurd comedy. Is it funny? Probably. People like it. Will I find it funny? I don’t know. Without wasting much time at all, I’ll see you in like a week by the time I finish everything. Maybe less.

So, how does one describe this anime? It claims to be some kind of parody, which it occasionally is, but it trancends that. It trancends most words in any manmade language, in fact. Maybe some aliens out there have a word that could describe what Pop Team Epic is, but I’ll have to ask them when I see them. I can only hope this series doesn’t turn them away.

That’s not to say Pop Team Epic is bad. It isn’t… I think. It’s honestly hard to tell. In order to determine whether something is good or not, I think you need to first have an understanding of what the hell that thing is first, which I don’t. To use the words from the synopsis, I would say an absurdist comedic parody is the best way you could put it, but more accurately is just some kind of fever dream you wake up from at like 4 am after watching anime all day.

I imagine a parody needs to be structured in some way to actually parody something, and a comedy needs to be somewhat coherent to be funny, so really absurd is the only word that fits really well. And you probably think I’m overreacting, but I’m not. It literally loops the first 11 minutes twice for every episode without any mention of it. And that’s actually the tame bits. 

I’m honestly not sure if I liked it or would recommend it. I would say watch at least a single episode if you want to understand what it’s like to be on drugs without the actual risk to anything but maybe your few brain cells. It’s one of the few things I’ve seen that is actually too weird. It’s so absurd that it starts to not really mean anything. You spend more time trying to understand it than time spent laughing at it, besides maybe nervous laughter, which was pretty common.

Like, it’s not bad, but it’s not good. It exists in some realm in between. It switches between unpleasant to confusing, to kind of funny in seconds, all while somehow staying in theme. But I couldn’t tell you what that theme is. It’s not an anime. It’s more an ethereal concept that I don’t think our human minds are ready for. Again, when the aliens come, I’ll ask if they know what they’re looking at, and maybe they can translate.

People joke about it, but I really don’t think a sober mind could come up with this. Like, I don’t know what you have to be on to think about this, let alone create something like it, but I don’t want any. I’m not ready to reach Nirvana or whatever will happen to my human form after taking it. It’s like if a computer watched ten comedy series then tried to recreate an anime of its own, but you dumped a bucket of water on the motherboard halfway through.

It’s like if the people on Reddit’s two-sentence horror tried to write whole episodes. It’s the physical embodiment of that one three-year-old kid in your family that rambles on about whatever thing they love so incoherently, but you have to smile and nod to make it look like you understood.

I actually can’t even say anymore. I don’t know what else I could say. If the pictures look interesting or my somehow more coherent than this series rambling makes you want to watch it, do it. I recommend it at least once, and that’s about it. 

Thank you very much for reading

Watch at your own risk